


For What It's Worth

by YouMinLi



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Adventurer Jongdae, Alternate Universe - Magic, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Fluff, I hope it's cute, M/M, Mage Yifan, Magical Artifacts, Man-eating plant - Freeform, Mentioned Byun Baekhyun, Potions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-29 23:37:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21418570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouMinLi/pseuds/YouMinLi
Summary: Yifan is just a normal person, running a normal little shop in the middle of what is possible nowhere. Then he appears, up-ending the peaceful life Yifan had made for himself, in some of the most creative ways Yifan could possibly think of.
Relationships: Kim Jongdae | Chen/Wu Yi Fan | Kris
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22
Collections: November Rain Fest Round 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt NR009 for November Rain Fest
> 
> This was a ride from beginning to end. A calm, nice ride that I probably steered a bit too slow, but this was a nice and soft ride. I hope the prompter likes this because this prompt was just so cute and had so much potential, and even though the story I wrote turned out nothing like what I had initially thought it would look like, I'm happy with it.
> 
> (Apologies to the mods for being such a bother, I'm a bit of a horrible person.)
> 
> Thank you to my amazing [beta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extensive_scribe) for helping me leap over the writer's blocks and ending up giving me my title, I love you. (even if you like the man-eating plant better than my two main characters what the fuc)

“How strong’s your strongest batch of weed-killer potions?” Yifan looks up from the little carriage he was trying to fix, a toy that the mother with two twin toddlers had accidentally forgotten when she came in to pick up her usual potion of strength and some skincare. 

Standing in front of him is a man, an adventurer, clearly, judging by the ash and soot making his hair stick up in wild directions and giving his clothes a choked up glow, eyes barely visible under the goggles that had been hastily cleaned. He looks slightly desperate.

“Well, I’ve had customers come back and say that they no longer need to go fight the southern mountain goats to steal a little one anymore. Do you want the household, gardening, monster, forest or cow variation?” Yifan sets the glue and half broken carriage wheel down, ready to go fetch the specific potion if need be, as most potion variations are kept in the back storage area where only he can get to them. That’s from personal experience.

“A cow version?” What seems to be the adventurer’s eyebrows raise slightly, but he cuts Yifan off before he could even try to explain. “Actually, nevermind. Do you have some like fire proof weed-killer? I need it immediately, my friends are getting blasted and I used the last open ring teleport to get somewhere I could get something useful.” 

Open ring teleports? Wow, looks like this guy is really desperate if he was resorting to something as old and unstable as open ring teleports. Yifan shrugs off judgmental thoughts since the man seems like he’ll probably start screaming if Yifan voices his opinions, and instead runs through a mental inventory, thinking of the things that were both weed-killers and fireproof. Surprisingly, he doesn’t have anything of the sort, weird. And Yifan had thought that he finally managed to cover everything that anyone could ever cover in terms of potion variations.

“Sorry, I don’t have any fireproof ones, but maybe if you describe what the plant acts like, I could think of an alternative.” 

“It’s a big, swinging tree-like thing that’s on fire and tries to kill me.”

Sentience. In a plant. Of course. 

“Hold on one second.” Yifan grabs a bottle of the monster and forest variations, since they’re both equally weird, and plop them down on the front desk. The adventurer stares at the bottles like they would cure all his problems, or perhaps just with more desperation, as Yifan pulls out the fire-proof spray and small empty flask he usually keeps under the table. Instead of spraying the bottle with the spray like he usually would, Yifan uncaps it and pours in half of the fire-proof potion, and measures the ratio of the different weed-killers into the small flask carefully. He recaps everything and the adventurer stares in what might be wonder or mute horror as Yifan shakes the flask like a bartender, putting some old skills to use, and then puts it down onto the table. The adventurer hovers a little in place as if he can’t figure out if he wants to move forwards or back, but follows Yifan’s lead in moving back slightly. 

“So, if that doesn’t explode, it’ll probably work.” Yifan offers, spraying the flask with the fire-proofing as well. 

“Can you just mix potions together like that.” The adventurer states, a bad idea seeming to come into his mind.

“No. Don’t do that at home. You don’t know which ingredients would react together and explode, and sometimes mixing it in together would just cancel out the effects or give it new ones.” Yifan starts capping bottles so that he doesn’t accidentally spill weed cleaner all over his store and kill off some of his more cultivated weeds, while the adventurer remains in place.

“Then how do you know it’ll work?” He asks suspiciously, and Yifan shrugs. 

“I don’t. I’m just hoping it will.”

“Did anyone tell you that you shouldn’t do that as a shop owner?” The adventurer is clearly trying to bite back a smile now, but he’s also moving forwards instead of running for the door so Yifan guesses his transparent position is bagging him yet another sale. 

“Yeah. But I’m the only one selling potions around here so people don’t really have a choice.” Yifan shrugs, handing the newly created potion to the adventurer. 

The adventurer does a sort of nod as he takes it and then reaches into a pocket indistinguishable from the rest of him. His eyes go comically wide for a moment as he gropes around inside, then shifts to another pocket. Yifan has seen this before, he knows very well the sight of a customer who has just realised they forgot to bring money. And for some reason, maybe pity or curiosity, he feels generous today.

“If you don’t have money, just come back and pay me another day. You said your friends really need this, and you can’t pay if you’re dead.” Yifan offers, and the adventurer nods, gripping the flask tighter.

“I’ll come back as soon as I can, I swear. Thank you so much!” The adventurer gives Yifan the first bow he’s ever gotten in his store and turns heel and sprints away, as if Yifan would suddenly change his mind and demand something else in exchange, or to hold as collateral. Oh, maybe he should’ve actually done that. But then again, the adventurer looks like a burnt matchstick, and Yifan rather not deal with that. Just him walking through the store has sent ash flying everywhere, and even more scatters as he bursts through the door, making a sound that hurt Yifan’s bones.

From just outside, Yifan hears the heart-achingly familiar sounds of a ring teleport starting up again, and his stomach clenches in sympathy for the poor adventurer. Well, enough worrying about a stranger, Yifan needs to clean up this ash. Sighing, he gets up and gets a broom.

Sometimes, he regrets opening this store.

Only sometimes.

~~~

“Hi?” There’s a bit of a line of people buying stuff, but Yifan still looks up from the lady he’s wrapping a warmth and permanent autumn scent potion for, to a guy standing a bit off to the side, as if wondering if he was in the right place.

“Sorry, I’ll get you to as soon as this line is over.” Yifan offers him the most polite smile he can conjure up at this moment, since this is clearly a customer who either wants something from the back or wants to talk. Hopefully it’s the former option, most people who want to talk aren’t in the best of moods.

“Oh, okay, I’ll wait.” And he drifts out of Yifan’s sight to do whatever he needs to do as Yifan takes the lady’s money and hands her back her change.

A very, very long time later, in which his supposed-to-be-fire-proof bottles burst into flames twice because someone doesn’t think that fire-proof really means fire-PROOF, Yifan finally ushers out the last customer who had been in that huge ass line, and finally gets to sit down and relax.

“Hey.” Oh. That wasn’t the last customer. 

“Hi. What do you need?” Yifan doesn’t bother standing up this time, just scoots his chair closer to the countertop and to the man standing on the other side of it. He’s dressed up quite casually, a nice warm sweater with a scarf which seems a bit odd for the season, but Yifan can’t exactly criticize anyone since he had once downed an experimental heat potion and now occasionally breathes fire and never gets cold. 

“Ah, I’m back?” Was he? Yifan does think he’s ever seen this particular customer before, which is weird since he thought that he remembers the faces of the usually few customers he gets, and would definitely remember this man. His eyes are rounded, giving him a softer look, and for some reason Yifan is immediately reminded of a kitten? Well, he’s certainly now never going to forget him.

“I’m sorry, it’s been a bit of a surprising rush at this store this last few days, so I don’t think I really remember you. Who are you again?” Yifan asks, and the customer, surprisingly, doesn’t get upset.

“Ah. I wasn’t really expecting you to remember me anyways.” A hand automatically travels up to the back of his hair as the customer stares at something on the floor, hesitant for some reason. “I’m the one who requested the fire-proof weed killer and you mixed a bunch of potions together?”

“Oh, you!” Damn, the adventurer looks a lot better when he’s not completely covered in soot and ash. “Can I assume that the potion worked because you’re here?”

“Yeah, all I had to do was get close enough to the plant to pour a bit on it and then it just died immediately.” He smiles, remembering a good memory? Before instantly jumping out of his memories back to Yifan. “Um, how much does it cost?” He pulls out a money bag clinking with coins.

“Um, give me a second. It’s not supposed to exist so I don’t really know how much to charge you.” Yifan explains, pulling out the ledger that a smarter and more organised him thought would be a good idea to keep, and now saves his life. “I’ll just ask for as much as the monster potion, since it’s also just a variation.” 

“Alright.” The adventurer counts out the right amount of coins out, and then rocks about a bit as Yifan puts it all into his lockbox. When Yifan finishes organising the coins by amount, he’s still standing there, looking a bit awkward. “I’m really sorry for not paying.”

“Oh, it’s okay since you came back and paid.” Yifan brushes it off, but still the adventurer doesn’t move. 

“Can I also get an eye-colour changing potion?” He finally asks, making his intent clear.

“Not lenses?” Yifan asks, raising an eyebrow. No one’s ever used an eye-colour changing potion since the lenses were invented, and that was about four centuries ago.

The adventurer shakes his head. “I can’t get used to the lenses and I’m not entirely sure how exactly to use them.”

“Alright then, give me a second.” Yifan is finally forced to get up again and head into the back to pull out the potion. Instead of handing it straight over, he uncaps it and pours a little out into a small cup that he hands to the adventurer, who tilts his head to the side, looking confused as to why he’s getting the potion as apparently a free trial type of thing.

“Sorry, but what is this?”

“I just need to check if it works, since some people’s bodies don’t react to certain variations of this potion.” The adventurer nods, accepting Yifan’s near bullshit answer and knocking it back like a shot. The real reason is that Yifan wants to find out if potions have an expiration date, because from what he’s seen, they just stop reacting instead of becoming dangerous chemicals, though it could just be because of one ingredient that very few people don’t react to.

The silence that falls as they wait is loud enough for Yifan to hear the gentle moving of one of his plants, shifting to get into a better position in its place wrapped around a wall. It’s a bit unsettling how directly the adventurer is staring back at him, probably because Yifan hasn’t made eye contact for this long in years. But Yifan doesn’t look away, and neither does he.

Then the round brown eyes slowly elongate, turning into yellow slits and Yifan considers this experiment a success. 

“Okay, your eyes changed.” Yifan caps the bottle and hands it over, and the adventurer gives him the right amount of change once again, his eyes glowing eerily orange this time. “So you know how to use these, right?”

“I’ve had enough of these not to need an instruction manual.” The adventurer replies, a bit of a smirk curling up at the corner of his lips as his eyes momentarily flash red and then jump straight to blue. “Thanks for everything, I’ll come again.”

And when he calmly walks out of the store, Yifan thinks that for the first time, he would be quite glad for that to happen. It’s surprising in a way. He doesn’t feel the urge to immediately shut the shop and take a nap or a walk alone, and he’s been talking with the adventurer for far too long. Ah well. The only thing that matters is that he’s gone, and Yifan can, finally, take a nap.

~~~

Ace finds the intruder first, and the second thing Yifan hears is the shouts of a poor person stupid enough to try and come in while he clearly still had the “WARNING: BEWARE OF PLANTS” sign up on his door. 

“Ace, put him down!” Man, this guy is lucky that standard and safety laws are like this these days, and that Yifan was actually awake. If it has been just a few years back, Yifan probably would’ve just let Ace eat him, most likely because he wasn’t awake to hear the shouts.

Ace lowers a leaf to Yifan’s eye level, and if Yifan could equate a facial expression to the way the leaf is crinkled, Ace would definitely be giving him a “really man” look. 

“I’ll make your favourite unicorn dish, can you let him go?” Yifan asks, sliding on a jacket that he had picked up on his way down for decency’s sake, so that he’s not standing in his front yard in the rattiest t-shirt he owns.

Ace shakes the leaf, as the struggling efforts and various cries from the dude in Ace’s clutches start dying down. Yifan sighs. This is why you don’t spoil your kids or pets or plants.

“We already talked about not eating the intruders and just capturing them, Ace. You captured the guy, I am here to take care of the threat, now let him go.” Tendrils slither behind Yifan to grab the beginner’s writing board and pen that Yifan had modified especially for Ace to use. There’s a quick moment of relative morning silence as Ace scribbles something down and then turns the board towards Yifan indignantly. 

“ _ I am hungry and I caught my own food like you wanted, so I am going to eat it. _ ”

“You’re just hungry because you refuse to eat the lamb I make you.” Yifan points at the pile of stacked up lamb dishes in the furthest corner from Ace, all more or less picked clean by less picky critters than Ace. 

“ _ I don’t like lamb. _ ” Ace declares, and Yifan scowls.

“You love lamb, and I told you that we won’t have any lamb-pepper until the traveling merchant comes back around in a few days.” Really, oregano isn’t that different in taste than lamb-pepper, and Yifan’s willing to bet that if he had just told Ace that it was lamb-pepper instead of admitting they were all out, then Ace would’ve eaten it anyways.

“ _ Well, I’m going to eat this man as breakfast. _ ” Ace starts putting the board down, acting as if this conversation is over.

“Ace, I already promised you roasted unicorn, put him down. He could be a customer!” Yifan demands, the struggles of the encaptured man really starting to die down, nothing but weak movements inside the pouch that consists of Ace’s mouth.

“ _ We don’t even have fresh unicorn _ .” Ace argues, now just being picky.

“Then I’ll go out and get you some unicorn, alright? Let the guy go first.” Yifan bargains.

“ _ I’ll hold him and wait for you to get back then _ .” Yifan is really starting to regret teaching Ace logic and psychology.

“You know that he’ll be dead before I get back, Ace. Let him go or I’m going to water you with weed-killer for the next week.” It does absolutely nothing to harm Ace because Yifan had spent a lot of time making sure that people can’t just come and kill Ace with some random weed-killer potion or whatever after losing both Star and Scorpio to random assholes doing exactly that. It just makes Ace, in his words, “feel nauseous,” and produce more corroding acid than usual, so Yifan just uses it as a bargaining chip when he’s really serious about something or when he just needs more corroding acid than how much Ace usually gives up.

“ _ Fine. I want unicorn by tomorrow. _ ” Ace relents, finally putting the guy down at Yifan’s feet and unfurling his leaves from around him. The good news is that no liquid leaks out, meaning Ace didn’t actually capture with the intention to eat, but the bad news is that he is certainly a customer and very unconscious. It’s once again the adventurer who needed the fire-proof weed killer, but today with a shock of very orange hair, almost as if he had been zapped by orange lightning.

Yifan kneels, searching for his pulse. It takes a tense few seconds, but Yifan eventually feels the tell-tale thumping of blood within his veins. He’s alive, just completely out, and Yifan sighs in relief.

“I’m taking him upstairs, don’t kill anyone else Ace.” Yifan warns his plant, and Ace just shakes a leaf at Yifan, not quite indicating if Ace was going to actually follow Yifan’s instructions or not. Probably not, but Yifan can certainly hope that no one else stupidly stumbles in before he officially opens.

The adventurer is a bit too cold to be normal, probably because of Ace’s gas that is merciful enough to make the victim unconscious before Ace pours in the acid and digests them. Unfortunately, that gas also slowly breaks down the victim’s body, and if he’s listening carefully enough, he can even hear the adventurer’s breaths getting shorter and shorter. 

Idiots. This is why you read the sign before you open a door, he doesn’t have the warning up just for aesthetics. 

Yifan drops the adventurer off in his own bed, and pulls his muddy boots off, setting them in the hallway so that mud isn’t all over his bedroom floor. There’s a quick second of debate of if he should strip the adventurer of his sweater and pants, but Yifan doesn’t even know his name, that’s weird. 

The kettle boils quickly, and just the smell of the warm potion wafting in the room seems to help revive the adventurer, even if Yifan’s starting to feel stuffy with the scent. The adventurer easily takes down the whole bowl, but refuses to open his eyes for Yifan to give him eye drops. 

There’s not much Yifan can do besides that, and since it’s still really early, he has time before he needs to open the store, so might as well start figuring out where he’s going to get fresh unicorn from. It’s no longer taboo to eat unicorn, but it’s still pretty frowned upon, meaning there’s no regular supplier because everyone who raises unicorns to be eaten or used in potions are usually closed down by a huge backlash of public opinion after barely a year in service. Yifan also hasn’t been in the loop about who would have unicorn for years, because at the time he didn’t think that Ace would like it so much. Figures.

The nearest place he thinks he’ll be able to hunt unicorns for a meal would be a full three countries away, and there’s literally no way he’ll be able to get some unicorn there. For one, he can’t hunt. There’s also a bunch of bureaucratic stuff involved in him trying to hunt unicorn, including the fact that he doesn’t have permission to do so. 

So instead of stressing about it, Yifan drops his maps and starts getting ready for the day. 

The adventurer wanders out in the middle of Yifan making breakfast, probably lured by the smells of the food. 

“How are you feeling?” Yifan asks, dropping his ladle to walk to the adventurer, who stands at the doorway of his kitchen, lingering with a hesitation that makes him seem almost not completely there. 

“Good? What happened?” His voice is dry and raspy, and Yifan grabs the other bowl of the counterpotion, handing it to him.

“I think you walked into my yard before I had opened for the day, so Ace attacked you, thinking you were an intruder. Sorry about that, I’ve had quite a few of them before so Ace gets paranoid.” Yifan responds, as the adventurer sips at the potion. 

“Oh. I’m sorry for intruding.” The adventurer’s voice is a lot fuller than before, signifying that he’s recovering nicely. 

“It’s fine. You’re just a bit early and we both did something wrong.” Yifan declares, and the adventurer nods. They stare at each other for a little while, not really sure what to do in this type of an awkward context. The pot bubbles alarmingly, and Yifan turns away first, needing to take it off the heat before he boils off all the water.

“So, do you want some breakfast? It’s really early, and after what Ace did, you’re probably pretty hungry.” Yifan offers, pouring in a bit more water before turning off the heat. 

“I would love breakfast, thank you.” Yifan hmms, sensing the adventurer walk closer to him as he takes it off the heat and puts on a different pan instead. “What are you making?” The adventurer peers over his arm as Yifan cracks an egg into the pan and quickly sprinkles some meat shreds on top of the egg, for flavour.

“Just some egg and meat. Are you allergic to anything?” Yifan asks, suddenly remembering an important point. The adventurer considers for a second before shaking his head no. 

“I used to be allergic to seafood, but the doctor cured me. Do you need help with anything?” 

“Not with the food.” Yifan replies, flipping the egg onto the other side for it to keep cooking. The adventurer's eyes seem to be pretty red around his pretty brown pupils, and Yifan suddenly remembers a very important point.

“Hey, can you bring over a bottle of eyedrops? It should be on the bedside table that you woke up by.” Yifan directs, and the adventurer nods.

“Sure.” He disappears into the room and reappears with the bottle in question. “This one?”

“Yeah.” Yifan scoops the egg and meat combination out and puts it into a plate, cracking the second egg into the pan. “Can you put two drops of it into each of your eyes? I couldn’t hold your eyelids open and drop it in at the same time.”

“What does it do?” The adventurer asks, tossing the bottle up into the air and catching it again.

“Ace makes a gas that isn’t the best to be exposed to, so the eyedrops calms the inflammation in your eyes and generally the nerves in your brain.” Yifan explains as the adventurer tilts his head up and starts doing exactly what Yifan asked of him.

“Ace seems to be pretty deadly.” The adventurer remarks, blinking one eye to let the eyedrop solution to go in.

“Ace is pretty deadly. You don’t seem to have much luck regarding killer plants, do you?” Yifan flips the second egg, feeling surprisingly at ease despite the random stranger behind him.

“I don’t. Maybe I should just stop leaving my house, at least I know the plants inside won’t try to kill me.” The adventurer comments, a bit of a light tone playing over his voice. “If only I didn’t like adventuring so much, staying home would be so much safer.”

“Yeah. What do you do as an adventurer?” Yifan asks, a bit curious as to what the adventurer was doing with the potions he had been giving him so far. Sure, everyone knows that adventurers go on adventures and quests, clearing out mindless monsters and exploring the unknown land that just keeps growing, borders expanding by way of the magic that runs this world. But what is this specific adventurer doing by trying to go shopping at hours even the dead wouldn’t be awake to see, and somehow always using technology that have become outdated for years due to new developments? It’s an honest wonder that this adventurer isn’t dead yet, seeing as he has the bad luck to be picked up by a murderous plant while on the way to simply buy something at a very early hour.

“What do I do? Well, my guild usually just gets a bunch of quests to clear dungeons and investigate places with weird stuff happening, and 9 times out of 10 it’ll be a monster or something. Sometimes there’s slightly more interesting stuff like the police asking for help to capture a criminal or something, but we mostly just operate on the whims of the world.” The adventurer blinks his other eye now, slowly tilting his head downwards as he caps the bottle of eyedrops. The eye he has open is already almost void of redness, back to the light white around the dark brown that his eyes should be.

“Where do your quests come from?” Yifan slides the egg gently onto another plate, an idea coming to his mind. 

“Sometimes people just bump into us and offer us quests, or maybe they go to the official guild request part and fill out a quest. Do you need help?” The adventurer comes forth once he sees Yifan struggling to turn off the stove and lift up both plates of eggs at the same time. It would’ve been smarter if Yifan closed the fire first, but the adventurer does it before he could think about it too much.

“Yeah, can you take the eggs out and take a seat? One plate is for you and the other is for me.” Yifan hands the plates off, the adventurer waiting obediently for Yifan to also hand over some chopsticks for the two of them.

“These look and smell delicious, you’re a good cook.” The adventurer compliments, stepping through the doorway to the little table considered Yifan’s dining area as Yifan takes out a ladle and a few more bowls to scoop up porridge for the two of them.

“Thanks.” Yifan quirks the corner of his lip up in a mock grin, and the adventurer smiles, accepting the bowl of porridge. “Eat up. Ace would’ve really sapped your strength.” 

The adventurer lowers the spoon into the porridge and scoops up a slight bit, blowing off some of the steam that rises. Then he looks up at Yifan right before he puts the spoon into his mouth, a defensive smile crawling onto his face. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I want to know if it you like it or not.” Yifan admits. The adventurer scoffs, and sticks the spoon into his mouth, savouring the liquid for a few seconds before swallowing, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Immediately afterwards, he sticks his spoon back into his bowl and scoops up another spoonful.

“It tastes great! I don’t think I’ve ever had any porridge as good as this.” The adventurer smiles, enthusiastically drinking more.

“That’s good.” Yifan grins, one worry alleviated. “Can I give you a quest?” 

“Sure.” The adventurer quickly swallows a mouthful of the porridge, wiping his mouth off. “For what?”

“I need a unicorn by tomorrow for Ace. It would be nice to get a whole unicorn so I can sell the other parts, but honestly all I need is the fresh meat.” Yifan admits. The adventurer’s opinion of him is probably dropping by the second.

“Why does Ace need unicorn meat? Did I accidentally poison Ace or something?” The adventurer asks, worry furrowing his brow. 

“No, it’s nothing like that. Ace was just being a brat and refusing to eat the lamb I make, so I used unicorn meat as a bribe so Ace wouldn’t eat you instead just to spite me.” Yifan rolls his eyes, not that Ace would be around to see him do so. 

“Oh. I’m really sorry for getting you into this mess. What kind of unicorn do you want?” The adventurer seems immediately interested, a bit too quickly so. 

“Any unicorn would do, and as long as the meat is pretty fresh, that’s all that matters. I’ll give you whatever you came here to buy as a reward, and the amount that the unicorn would’ve cost.” Yifan bargains, really regretful. This poor guy just nearly got eaten and now he’s being sucked into slightly illegal unicorn meat trade by Yifan.

“Oh, I don’t need a reward. You saved me from being killed, and I was trespassing pretty early. Besides, I should pay for what I buy.” The adventurer argues. Yifan disagrees with this statement.

“Think of it as an apology for Ace nearly eating you. It’s just a bit extra on top of me justly paying for the unicorn.” Yifan argues back.

The adventurer shakes his head, and the look in his eyes makes Yifan think that he should probably just wrap up the argument before the food gets cold. “I have the money to pay for my own things, so just let me buy it. You took care of me and made me breakfast already, so I shouldn’t get a reward for this quest. Just think of it as an apology for trespassing and causing you all this trouble.”

“Fine.” Yifan sees the corners of the adventurer’s lips curl up a bit more than usual, assuming things before the bargain is fully stated. “I’ll just give you the amount of money that the unicorn costs as a reward and you pay for whatever you came to get. Does that sound like a good bargain?” 

The adventurer considers, and reluctantly nods. “Sounds good. So this quest would be from a mage?” 

Yifan shakes his head as fast as he possibly can, not willing to get caught up in more troubles than it’s worth for identifying as a mage. “No, I’m just a merchant, not a mage at all.”

“Really?” The adventurer tilts his head to the side, staring around the room at the herbs hanging around to give that feeling of aesthetic and to give off a soothing scent that Yifan has completely stolen as his own. 

“I get my potions and herbs and stuff from another mage, I just run the store.” Yifan blurts out, smiling to diffuse the situation. “I’m not a mage at all, I just know some stuff about potions and stuff.”

“That’s cool. Alright, here it is.” The adventurer snaps his fingers and a paper twists into existence, hovering in front of Yifan with a bold x staring him in the eyes, telling him to sign immediately.

“Are you a wizard?” Yifan had heard of the rank of wizards in guilds, but if the adventurer is a wizards, why would he be coming to Yifan’s shop for ready-made potions instead of ingredients?

“No.” The adventurer smiles, apparently finding the notion so hilarious that he couldn’t properly believe it. “This little magic is for the quests, when they’re being given in person and not written down. Our treasurer is pretty dedicated to keeping quests and their rewards organised, so he hired a mage to make an enchantment so that someone just needs to verbally give a quest instead of being forced to go to headquarters and write it out. You just need to sign your name on the line and I’ll be able to take the quest immediately.” 

“That’s really cool.” Yifan comments, taking the floating pen and quickly scrawling his signature on the line. The paper snaps out of existence and back into existence a second later, rolled up and neatly tied on the table next to the adventurer’s arm. 

“Yep. Now this quest is mine, and I’ll be back for my items with the unicorn tomorrow.” The items!

  
“Why tomorrow? If you tell me what you need, I can just get you some right now.” Yifan scoots his chair back, shoving one quick bite of the egg in his mouth before he gets up.

“You’re still eating, don’t get up just yet. I just need some fireproof skis and a potion of fire breathing.” That sounds like a very bad idea waiting to happen, but Yifan isn’t here to judge anything.

Yifan scoots his chair back in and picks up his chopsticks again. “Do you mean fire breathing as in able to breathe fire, or able to breathe in fire?”

“Oh gods, there’s a distinction?” The adventurer ponders, staring into his nearly empty bowl as if looking for an answer. “Breathe in fire?” 

That sounds like an even worse idea than before. “Alright. Do you have a fire-proof body potion? Because if you need to breathe in fire, you should probably have that first.” 

“Yeah, I have that, can I take the two together?” The adventurer asks, and while Yifan doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, he can probably guess that it’s not going to be pretty.

“Yes. They’re basically the same potion but for different parts of your body, but don’t take too much of either.” The adventurer nods, considering wisely as he chews on a particularly crunchy piece of meat. Yifan might not be one to think about the worst case scenarios, but he does take the time to wonder if he would actually get a unicorn tomorrow.

~~~ 

This teenage boy is taking a very long time in discussing the benefits and downsides of potentially using a feather-light potion versus using a lightening potion, and while Yifan doesn’t want to say he wants to kick this guy out, he does kinda want to kick this boy out. 

There’s no one else in the shop with the light noon sun shining down and making everything drowsier, slower, a bit more bent in this time. Yifan has lunch to eat and laundry to hang, but this single boy is just disturbing all his plans. And the unicorn that the adventurer had promised him still hasn’t arrived, so Ace is getting fussier and fussier by the second. Though at this point, he would probably welcome Ace stretching tendrils into the store and scaring this boy off, he wants to close up.

The door opens, and Yifan learns for the second time in his life that miracles do come true, because it’s nothing other than Ace’s tendrils, stretching across the empty store like an ominous personal connection, holding two pieces of white. 

“So while the potency of the feather-light potion might be better, in my case a lightening potion might be better, won’t you think?” The boy concludes, looking up at Yifan for an answer.

“Yeah, uh huh, that sounds about right.” Yifan can’t even bother to take his eyes off the board Ace holds aloft, trying to guess at the characters on the board. Why is Ace’s tendril-writing so small again?

“What are you-oh Tian!” The boy jumps back when he sees the herd of tendrils slowly taking over Yifan’s store, coming closer and closer.

“That’s just my plant, probably upset I haven’t made lunch yet.” Yifan suggests, still not quite able to make out that one character in the beginning. Is that even a word? “How about you just buy the lightening potion and leave before Ace gets mad?”

The boy dumps a few coins down onto the counter, exact change remarkably, grabs the lightening potion without waiting for Yifan to ask if he wants a bag for that, and runs out the open door, taking great care to not accidentally step on Ace. Once he’s out the door, Yifan hears a faint scream fading away, but that’s no longer his problem. The important issue is that he can now attend to whatever Ace decided was so urgent that it required Yifan’s immediate attention, which is the note and the message Ace has.

“ _ My unicorn is here. Are you going to make me eat it like this just to be mean? _ ” Ace wrote, adding on a sad face at the end. Ace is a brat, but that’s not the important part. The adventurer actually managed to deliver a unicorn?

The note says something similar, scribbled quickly on some official guild paper, holding the signet and name of the leader in purple ink at the top of the page. So the adventurer is part of the EXODUS led by Baekhyun. Yifan hasn’t heard of them before, which means they’re probably pretty new. 

“ _ Here is one unicorn, as requested. I have another quest to attend to, so I’ll pick up my reward tomorrow. Thank you for your things, the potion and skis work perfectly! _ ” 

The character that spells out the adventurer's name is too blurry for Yifan to be able to distinguish it, but the important part is that he did it. He managed to get a unicorn for Ace, but how much of a unicorn is it?

Yifan steps out to find Ace very clearly watching a live unicorn tied to the gate, following its every move. Oh.

~~~

“Hi.” Yifan looks up from his book to see the adventurer standing in the doorway, wearing a black turtleneck that really suits his hair, softly curled and back to the light brown it was earlier. His eyes are now a deep blue, stars and universes swirling within them. He looks like a prince instead of an adventurer, even though his boots very clearly still give away his work.

“Oh hi, you’re here for your reward?” Yifan asks, setting down his book and pulling open his cash register, ready to hand over a rather astronomical amount. Unicorns don’t come cheap, especially healthy ones with all their parts.

“Yep. I also need to make my usual purchases.” Yifan scoffs at that, pulling out the small bag of coins he had already prepared, and plopping it onto the countertop.

“Here you go. There’s an anti-theft charm on that bag so you won’t be robbed before you get back to your guild hall.” The adventurer’s eyes go wide when he sees the bag, and he gently brushes against the fabric, ghost-touches.

“Are you sure this is it? It looks pretty big, are you sure you didn’t accidentally put in too much?” 

“Yep. I counted it a few times just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.” Yifan pushes the bag slightly forwards for the adventurer to take, but he doesn’t move. 

“A unicorn can’t possibly cost this much. You’re overpaying me, aren’t you?” The adventurer accuses, poking the bag slightly and hearing the clanging of a few coins clicking together. 

“I’m not overpaying you. A unicorn is expensive, and I’m paying you how much I think it should cost.” Yifan states. He understands the adventurer’s wariness, even if it’s completely unfound. His righteousness is commendable, even if it’s almost a bit naive. But as long as he meets the right people - and from the way he works with his guild it seems like he has - he seems like he’ll get pretty far in life.

“How is a unicorn expensive?” He challenges, leaning forwards slightly onto the counter. He braces his arms on either side of the bag while being extremely careful to not touch it again, as if touching the money would automatically make it his.

“Well, unicorns are extremely magical. Besides eating unicorn meat, which has health benefits and curses upon whoever eats it, unicorn horn, hair, hooves and blood are also used in a variety of magical stuff, from potions to being sold as is, to spells and modifications. The amount of money that one living unicorn is worth is enough to probably supply someone for a lifetime, if they live moderately.” Yifan explains, pulling open the bag for the adventurer to look inside. “I didn’t give you enough gold to swim though, but it’s a good amount. I’m probably also underpaying you a bit, but if you have any issues with the amount, you can always just come back and complain.” 

“Oh. Well, then, thank you for this, as well as your quality customer service…” The adventurer trails off, a blank stare coming over his face as he stares into Yifan’s eyes, giving Yifan a front row view to the way the light within his eyes dies as he realises a horrifying truth.

“Something happen?” Yifan asks gingerly, wondering if he should try and get this guy to a medic. Sure, he can do some basic first aid, but he barely knows anything about medicine besides the stuff that affects him.

“I just realised that we don’t know each other’s names.’” The adventurer utters seriously, mulling things over. “I ate your food and nearly got eaten by your plant, but I don’t know what to call you.”

Oh right. They don’t know each other’s names. Huh. Yifan just realised that this whole time he had been referring to the man as the adventurer, and not a name. The adventurer is a name of a sort, but not his name. 

Yifan holds his hand out to shake as he offers a grin. “Well, my name is Yifan. Nice to meet you...:” 

“Chen.” The adventurer, no, Chen, takes his hand and gently shakes it, leaning closer towards Yifan like daring him to do something. The curl of his lips give him almost a catlike quality in his grins. It’s a pretty look on him.

“Oh, like the jingle, right?” Yifan asks, and Chen tilts his head to the side, drawing back slightly. 

“Jingle? What jingle?” 

_ One free enchantment from Chennie Chennie Chen Chen’s, if you have a sullen or a broken heart today!  _ Gods, that jingle was so annoying, and you could barely walk down the street two steps before you heard it again, echoing like a demonic possessed radio recording coming from a different device as soon as the first one was done. The worst part was that no one actually knew where Chennie Chennie Chen Chen was, but the general consensus became that if Chennie Chennie Chen Chen saw that you had a broken or sullen heart and wanted to meet, then you would meet. In the end, that jingle ended up traumatizing a generation of people, a ban on enchanting advertisements to ever get on that same level of annoying, and Chennie Chennie Chen Chen presumably very happy with their marketing ploy.

“Oh, nothing.” Yifan muses, unwilling unless by force of death to utter that horrific enchantment aloud. “So do you mind if I call you Chennie Chennie Chen Chen?”

“Huh? Why?” Chen asks, a startled grin slipping on. 

“I think it kinda fits you.” Yifan states. 

Chen shrugs, the grin still very much on his face. “Sure, I guess. It’s a bit cute.” Oh, he’s going to regret agreeing to this.

“It suits you perfectly.” 

“Okay.’ Chen’s cheeks are a bit red as he stands up straight, looking up at the ceiling for a second. Is there something on the ceiling? Probably one of Ace’s leftover tendrils from yesterday. But Yifan doesn’t see anything. 

Chen clears his throat, and Yifan redirects his gaze from the ceiling to his customer. “So I actually did come here to buy some stuff.”

“What is it?” Yifan asks, readying himself to get up and find it.

He digs around in his back pocket before pulling up a folded square page. Raising it up, he explains, “I have a list. One bottle of everglow dew, two droppers of bird milk, a handkerchief of Rambo, and an El-el-I can’t read that.” Chen holds the page out for Yifan to decipher, and it’s only due to Yifan’s many years at staring at Ace’s barely legible tendril-writing that he is able to make out the characters at the end.

“Elyxion. Wow, I didn’t know people still know what they were.” Yifan remarks to himself. The other ingredients are quite commonplace, but there’s only one use for an elyxion, and if done by an unprofessional hand, usually tends to go very wrong. 

“Yeah, I don’t know what they are.” Yifan stares at him blankly and Chen immediately protests. “Look, I didn’t write the list.” 

“Alright. But I don’t even know if I have an elyxion anymore.”

“Anymore?” Chen asks, and Yifan nods, heading into his storage room to grab the other items for him.

“Yeah, there was a bit of a scandal that happened a few years bad when someone messed up completely with an elyxion. I think they more or less wiped a city completely from the map, and while governments couldn’t ban it because it’s needed for very specialised crafts and the person who misused it was just an idiot, they immediately tightened the restrictions on it,” Yifan calls, trying to find where he stashed the handkerchiefs. 

“That’s horrifying,” Chen comments, and Yifan nods to himself before remembering that Chen can’t actually see him like this,

“It was. Either way, it became almost impossible to get an elyxion if you weren’t on a list of people who needed it for a craft. I was running out when it happened so I just didn’t bother restocking, so I don’t know if I have any more.” Yifan stares back and forth between two handkerchiefs, trying to figure out which one Chen wanted. “Hey, did you want the hand cherif of Rambo or Rampo?” 

“Rambo.” Chen responds almost immediately, and Yifan puts the Rampo one back. “If you don’t have any then it’s fine. My friend probably has some, he’s on the High Council of Mages.”

“No, I have at least one. The question is where I put it.” Yifan gently sets the other three ingredients on the counter for Chen to look them over. 

“If it’s troubling you then it’s not that important.” Chen pulls out his wallet, starting to pull coins out for Yifan.

“It’s better than troubling your friend,” Yifan says seriously, disappearing underneath his counter to search within the nook there. “The High Council is really strict, he’ll probably be heavily fined if he’s caught giving an elyxion to someone without the qualifications, and it’s easier to get it from a commercial means. It’s probably just behind this huge box.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that. You sure know a lot about the High Council.” Chen remarks, sounding guilty. Committing felonies against the rules of the High Council is extremely easy to do, if Chen’s friend suggested giving him stuff then he’s either a high enough position that it doesn’t matter if he’s fined, or he’s already mastered the art of doing it sneakily enough that no one will know.

Yifan strains against the huge box in the way, wishing he had been smart enough to bring a light down here. “Yeah, I was on-I mean I know someone who is on the High Council.” What did he put in this box anyways? 

“Cool.” Chen hesitates for a quick second, and Yifan tries to straighten his back and instead smacks his head into the top, an ouch automatically coming out. “Do you need help?’

“No, I’m fine.” Yifan pulls the box open and finds that this is where he had conveniently decided to place all his weights. He was looking for those!

“You sure-oh.” Yifan’s sure that he probably looks like a very dusty mess when he reemerges from under the counter, but finding that that box was full of weights means that he’ll need to spend a good few days cleaning out the place, seeing as he’s not going to move those weights anywhere today.

“Sorry, I haven’t dusted under there for a long time. Here, an elyxion.” Yifan reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls it out, the general mass glowing a strange shade of blue.

“This is so cool.” Chen marvels at it on the counter, moving his hand close but not fully touching it.

Yifan brushes some dust off his shoulders, displeased at the fact that it managed to get there in the first place. “It is. This Elyxion is already like half used so I’ll just give it to you for free. If you want a new one, then you should come back, I’ll probably have found the box by then.” 

“Sure. I don’t know what he needs it for, but he said all he needs is a little, so this would probably be enough.” Chen comments, watching Yifan start to bag everything.

“Yeah, then this should be enough. When it’s activated, it’ll look vaguely like an angel.” Yifan places it gently into one of the weightless bags, tying it tight and then putting the first bag into the bag with the handkerchief. The two bottles both need to be protected, and shoving the bag of coins into a weightless bag is annoying, but he does it anyway, putting the final three bags onto the counter.

“Thanks for everything, Yifan.” Chen says, pushing the right amount of coins over and gingerly gathering his bags, carefully as to not accidentally smash the bottles against each other.

“Anytime, Chennie Chennie Chen Chen.” Yifan smiles when Chen laughs, waving one last time before pulling the door open and leaving. 

~~~

“Can I stay here for a bit?” Chen asks, his eyes jumping rapidly between colours every other word he speaks. It seems like he took a bit of the eye-colour changing potion before he got here. 

“This is a store, not a cafe.” Yifan comments, as Chen shrugs and takes a seat on the floor. 

“Just until your next customer comes, it’s really warm and cozy in here for some reason.” Chen lies back onto the floor, rubbing against the floorboards as if trying to snuggle into a good blanket instead of thankfully just cleaned hardwood.

Is it warm and cosy in his store? Yifan always just kept it at the temperature he could comfortably wear only one layer, but maybe it’s a bit high, seeing as how Chen stripped himself of his outer coat as soon as he stepped in.

“Fine. But do you have to lie on the floor like that?” Yifan peers down at Chen, who lazily opens one eye, staring up at him. 

“I don’t want to get up.” Chen groans, and Yifan shakes his head. 

“I have a couch you could lie on.” Chen pops up immediately, a little like one of those automatic scarecrows.

“Where?” Chen asks, and Yifan gestures for Chen to round the counter and come over to the back. Chen’s going to love this couch, it’s right next to all his heat generating potions, and the last time Yifan had a cat, she loved sleeping in that exact spot.

Chen rounds the counter a bit hesitantly, but as soon as he sees the light brown couch, all his reservations disappeared, and he more or less jumps onto the couch. 

“It’s so nice and warm.” Chen smiles, eyes closed and curling up into the couch exactly how Yifan thought he would.

“I’m glad you like it, Chennie Chennie Chen Chen.” Chen’s eyes shoot open as soon as Yifan tries laying a blanket over him, but closes them as soon as he’s fully covered, snuggling into it a little. 

“Are you trying to get me to take a nap?” Chen asks, seeming to slip into a nap on his own. 

Yifan shrugs, pulling off a cookie scented candle from the shelf and lighting it while Chen’s still not watching. “If you want. I can just wake you later.” 

“I came here for a bottle of broken glass, not to nap.” Chen may say one thing, but his eyes are still closed.

“Got it. I’ll bag it while you lie here, there’s no one else in the store besides us anyways.” Chen hmms an agreement as Yifan pulls the bottle down from an even higher shelf and puts it in a bag, just like what he said he would. 

Hours come and go, and so do customers, but Yifan tiptoes around Chen to grab stuff out the back. One of the most important lessons he’s learned in life is that when someone’s sleeping and they don’t need to be anywhere, you should let them sleep. 

The book he’s reading ends on a cliffhanger, but he doesn’t have the next one in the series on him. Besides, there’s sounds of blankets rustling and limbs moving. When he pokes his head into the back, Chen’s stretching out his limbs, yawning long and slowly as he sits up, hair somehow still pretty neat. His eyes had decided to settle on a pretty ice blue that makes him look not fully mortal, but then again, barely anyone’s fully mortal these days.

Chen blinks a few times, gathering his bearings before turning his head to Yifan in the doorway. “How was your nap?”

Chen shrugs. “What time is it?” He croaks.

“Late afternoon.” Yifan offers Chen a cup of water, to which he stares at suspiciously. Yifan might understand the reasoning, but it still hurts when you offer refreshment out of the good of your heart and it’s rejected so coldly. “I promise that it’s only water.”

Chen slowly takes the cup, bringing it up to his nose and sniffing a few times before actually drinking. When he didn’t immediately start flying away off the ground or whatever he was expecting to happen, he gulps the rest of the cup down. 

“I was going to leave when you got another customer.” Yifan nods.

“I didn’t get any other customers.” Chen fixes him with a stare that very plainly says that he doesn’t believe for a second that what Yifan says is true, but Yifan just keeps smiling and Chen rolls his eyes, clearly giving up the struggle.

“Fine, I’m going to leave now then. Thanks for letting me sleep.” Chen stands, pulling the blanket off and leaving it n a pile on the couch. 

“Don’t you want your bottle of broken glass?” Chen nods at that, turning to Yifan to lead the way. “The bottle is also glass, so if there’s not enough, you can break it and get some more.”

“Cool. Thanks for everything.” Chen hands over the right amount, Yifan hands over the glass bottle of broken glass, and they both go off into their separate ways.

~~~

Over the next few weeks, Chen stops in, for seconds at a time, just barely enough time to rush in, breathlessly ask for an item, throw far too much money at Yifan and then run out without accepting his change. 

He buys, in this order:

-Firefly lace, while wearing a very upset goose as a hat.

-Half of a piece of a croissant made with bread flour, thankfully Yifan was just having one for a snack, though the fact that it was so specific was kinda worrying.

-A barely functional eldorada, another goose on his head though seeming to not be the same as the previous one.

-Explosive powder, the clear kind that explodes into green smoke. Soot covers one half of the goggles around his forehead and pushing his now half-black half-green hair into a very weird spike. 

-Zeveu string, though he has to run back in seconds later and ask for Elam string as well.

-A brush. Chen doesn’t specify what kind of brush, but takes the broom Yifan had standing against the table and runs off before Yifan could even begin to find him a brush, despite it being neither a brush nor for sale. Well, Yifan was due for a new broom anyways.

-A potion of instant fur-growth, taking the time to specify he doesn’t actually have a pet to use it on, yet not saying what or who the potion is actually for. Yifan has no indication that Chen pausing outside the door to the store and fumbling with the bottle was actually him ingesting some of this liquid, and he would like nothing more than to think that is not the case, but it is kinda suspicious.

-And one singular crosshair, pulling open the pouch in front of Yifan, taking a single one out and plopping it directly into his mouth. Before Yifan could do anything, such as force Chen to spit it out before he dies, he pulled the pouch close, tossed it in Yifan’s general direction, grabbed a potion off the nearest shelf and chugged about ten years’ worth of hair-growth potion within ten seconds. Then, leaving Yifan clutching a pouch of crosshairs and staring in both mute horror and terror, Chen bursts into a cloud of birds and Yifan wakes up from his hallucination, finding Chen thankfully not in the store facing certain and very fast death, but nowhere to be seen and Yifan not sure what part of the crosshairs-induced hallucination was actually hallucinated and what was real.

Yifan decides then and there that he needs to stock face masks within the store so this never happens again. Both kinds of face masks .

~~~

Thankfully, Chen is not dead. Chen, however, is exhausted. 

It shows in every single particle of his appearance, from the shock of black hair he sprouts, to the halfhearted way he staggers into the store, bringing a smell of seashells and something sweet, dandelions maybe? Yifan passes him a cup of wakefulness potion when he stumbles to the counter, and it’s a testimony to Chen’s condition when he immediately knocks back the cup of teal liquid without questioning exactly what was in the cup.

From up close, Chen looks even worse. His black hair appears to actually be such a shade of dark blue that it’s almost impossible to tell the difference besides with a heavy light shining down and throwing the colour into contrast against the actual black of Chen’s collar, which also looks like had some heavy ink damage. The eyebags under his eyes are so pronounced that they highlight the distinction between his skin tone, which is so pale that it looks like someone had decided to drain all the blood from his skin entirely. His eyes are shifting nervously every blink between black and red, and Yifan notices that Chen is actually blinking rapidly enough that his eyes rarely stay a single colour for more than a second at most.

The wakefulness potion only stops Chen’s horrible blinking over and over, but then he’s barely blinking at all so Yifan’s not really sure if it had actually fixed anything, or if it had exposed another problem.

“How are you doing?” Yifan asks delicately, not sure where he could start the questioning. Maybe Chen just had a blood-sucker parasite stuck to him and all that needs to happen is that the blood-sucker would need to go.

“I have lived through hell and it wants to drag me down.” Chen says, voice monotone in a fashion that makes Yifan feel like he’s hearing him through a machine, somehow distorting his voice from its vibrant tones and distinct characteristics, turning it into a robotic mimic of what is.

“Cool. Are you okay?” Chen turns his head slowly towards one side, and then at the exact same speed, turns it back towards the other side, performing the slowest head shake Yifan has ever seen.

“I have 19 potions currently in my system right now, not including yours, and I am waiting for my inevitable death to kick in.” Yifan sucks in a breath, trying to not betray the echo of “Yikes” ringing around his head at the present moment. 19 potions? At this present moment, Chen is a bit like a chemical bomb. If you shake him a bit too hard, there’s a genuine worry that he just might explode.

“Alright. Do you need to be running on these potions right now?” Yifan bets he can guess about 5 of those potions just by looking at Chen, but damn, 19 potions?

“No.” Chen shrugs, blinking and switching his eye colour rapidly to red. “Baekhyun told me that we were going to go see a medic and that I needed to get these potions out of my system, but he took the wrong teleport.”

Judging from the way that Chen stands there so still, Yifan is willing to bet that it was actually Chen who had taken the wrong teleport and triggered a frequent location. It’s almost touching that this shop would be a frequent location, but first he needs to help Chen’s poor soul.

“Do you remember what potions you had drank?” Yifan questions, pulling out a pad of paper and a pen. 

“It was a free-tasting.” A fucking what? 

“What do you mean, a free-tasting?’ Yifan asks, trying really hard not to do something extreme. He’s not sure what that extreme would be, but it would be extreme.

“I mean we got to taste potions for free. Part of the cover. I had 19 before they let us leave because people who run little booths are as stubborn and insistent as werewolves.” Chen isn’t wrong there, but what kind of a quest requires a cover and to go to places where you get to taste-test potions? That is about 5 different kinds of horrifying.

“Well, since you haven’t exploded just yet, let’s start trying to get these potions out of you before they do.” Yifan caps the pen and shoves everything off to the side. He doesn’t know what the potions are, so he can’t even start to guess at what the ingredients could be, which means he can’t exactly counter anything. Instead, he might as well just start doing the standard poison control thing by not calling poison control, but just attempt to flush everything out of Chen’s system with a cleansing elixir.

“How are you qualified?” Wha-what? Yifan stops in his tracks, not that he was actually moving, but his legs not even wanting to take a step towards the direction he was going to head in.

“What do you mean by qualified?” Yifan feels a bit like the time he had been hit by a bat in the spleen. He didn’t know it was his spleen at the time, the doctor had told him that part of the story later, but there was a distinct feeling of neutrality, before the feeling was broken by a bat in his spleen and blood rolling past his lips. The doctor had also explained that the blood was because his heart had just given up and decided that it was going to quit, but couldn’t really do that so just decided to take revenge at the first sign of chaos.

“I mean like how are you qualified to help me? You said that you just have a basic understanding of potions, not that you can tell how to counteract potions you’ve never heard of or even seen before.” The irony trying to crush Yifan’s skull in is so heavily that he nearly bows under the weight of it.

“I’m sorry I lied to you, but I am a mage. I promise you that I’m also really good at potions and I understand them and how I could help.” Yifan pleas, but Chen is still immovable.

“What proof do you have?” Chen asks, managing to look even more unimpressed.

“I’ll summon my wand, please let me help you.” Yifan lifts his hand, very seriously actually about to do so.

“It’s okay. I would’ve let you help whether you were a mage or not.” Chen makes an attempt at a smile that looks more like a grimace, and Yifan wonders if he should just give up and speed Chen to the nearest medic anyways.

“Okay. I’ll get you a cleansing elixir, but you might throw up after it.” The standard one won’t be strong enough, but Yifan’s also worried that if he gets anything too strong, which might have a polarising effect with something already in Chen, then it’ll get worse.   
  


“Sure. Can I sit down?” Yifan nods, pulling Chen behind the counter to take his own seat. 

“Don’t do anything too sudden.” Yifan warns, and Chen nods, rolling his eyes at the same time. 

Yifan was considering between two cleansing elixirs, a water-based one and an oil-based one when the sound of a huge crash out front grabs his attention. Instead of deciding, he takes them both and rushes out, finding Chen sprawled out on the ground next to the chair, head tilted to one side and not really looking aware of how he got there.

“Oh gods, are you okay?” Yifan rushes to Chen’s side, trying to help him up. Instead, Chen waves him off, pushing up and getting up on his own. 

“Yeah. Sorry for the crash, I leaned over a bit too far in the chair and it fell.” Yifan rights his chair as well, and makes a split second choice.

“Here, I got you a cleansing elixir, it should help.” He hands over the water based one, the safer choice, and watches anxiously as Chen uncorks the little bottle and throws back the little liquid like a shot. “How about you sit back down?” 

“Okay yeah I do need to do that.” Chen lowers himself down, Yifan hovering very close in case he falls again. 

The process is very gradual, but Yifan watches and waits for Chen to suddenly swing towards a sudden extreme. The first thing to go was the blue hair, bleeding out from the roots down to the tips, slowly turning fully black instead of being a great facsimile. Then Chen regains the colour in his face, no longer looking like a drained shell of a person.

“How are you feeling?” Yifan asks, summoning a cup of warm water from his kitchen, watching it rush over. He can just gently bend this no magic indoors rule, it’s for a good cause.

“Like shit.” Chen’s eyes are now more or less fully dark brown in the colour it naturally is, and while his dark circles didn’t disappear, he looks so much better than he did when he stumbled through the door. 

“At least you can feel!” Yifan adopts a fake cheery tone as he hands Chen the cup of water, but Chen doesn’t even blink at this, adopting perhaps the most unimpressed look he possibly can as he drinks. Yifan had just sent the cup back into his kitCHEN before Chen coughs slightly, expelling a bit of grey ash.

“I also feel like I could throw up.” Yifan summons an empty wastebasket and has it held under Chen’s face before he could finish the sentence, prompting a half-hearted glare by Chen just before he starts dry-heaving.

There’s only two dry heaves before Chen’s coughing out a glittery purple cloud, and finally his shoulders slump down, the cleansing elixir finished. 

“How do you feel now?” Yifan asks tenderly, and Chen nods.

“I remember the first sample potion I had. It was a time-delayed memory wipe potion.” Chen collapses forwards and Yifan drops the waste-basket to catch him. Fuck! It’s the oil-based cleansing elixir that works better on memory potions, and he drank it first, which means the elixir he gave Chen is going to do nothing to help it. 

Yifan slowly leans Chen back against the chair, waiting for the memory wipe to finish doing its job. The wipe shouldn’t last longer than 5 minutes, and since he was only sampling it then it shouldn’t be too potent, just a few hours or maybe 4 days at best gone. 

“Don’t leave.” Chen mumbles, hand grabbing onto Yifan’s arm as he was just about to take it off Chen’s shoulder. His eyes fly open and Yifan feels his heart physically jump as he stares into completely black eyeballs. Then Chen blinks and the protective lenses slide back into his head and Yifan wonders if he should say something about that.

“I’m not leaving, I’m just going to get you some water.” With some of that anti-memory wipe potion dilated inside.

“Can I have a hug?” Chen opens his arms, words slightly slurred as the effects of the memory wipe slowly wears off.

“You can always have a hug.” Yifan says, slowly bringing Chen in for a hug. “Why do you want one?” 

“You’re warm and nice.” Chen mumbles into Yifan’s ear, words still slightly jumbled.

“Okay.”

“Yifan?” 

“Yes?” 

“How did I get here?” 

~~~

It’s not good when the wind howls. 

Usually it’s because that means it’s so cold that Ace would probably be affected and Yifan needs to go out and either get Ace some heaters or bring Ace indoors, but he’s already buried Ace and the ground nearby in a pile of the warming blankets and charms. Ace even expressed a complete warmth before Yifan covered up the last few leaves. No, today the wind howls like a wounded dog and Yifan’s concerns fall upon the concept of an omen. He’s never really liked or had any luck with dog comparisons, and the fact that he himself is making a dog comparison is not a happy thought.

It’s like how he’s still sitting in the downstairs shop area instead of on his couch in his living room. It’s completely dark outside, no one’s going to come to the store at this time, but Yifan just sits, waiting. For what exactly, he’s not sure, but it’s probably for the wind to stop howling so he can go out and check if Ace had killed another wolf-star.

As requested, the wind stops howling, and Yifan forces himself up from his seat. 

The walk to the door is too long, but Yifan trudges over, sticking his head out the door.

“Ace? Did you kill anything this time?” 

There’s no answer, so Yifan supposes that’s a no. Instead, he sticks his head back in and closes the door, intending to clear up a few last things before he locks the door and goes through the back to get to his actual living area. Key word: intending.

A body hits the door behind Yifan, and he recites 5 curses that should not have been said before he gets the will to turn around and see who, or what’s there. And through the window there’s a mess of brown hair and flashing eyes. Chen?

“What are you doing?” Yifan pulls the door open, in the perfect position to catch Chen as he peels off the door and falls directly into Yifan’s arms. “Do you have another last minute thing you need?”

“Yes and no.” Chen replies, practically shaking in short sleeves. Who let him out of the house in this flimsy stuff? “Gods, you’re warm.” 

“Why are you wandering outside in short sleeves? I had to wrap Ace up so the frost doesn’t freeze the roots and get Ace all cranky.” Yifan asks, moving his own arms up and down Chen’s frozen limbs to try and get some warmth back into them as the door swings close.

“Someone thought it would be funny.” Chen spits out through gritted teeth. Yifan isn’t sure if it’s anger or shuddering that makes him do that, but he’s not willing to ask. “What’s the best potion to set someone on fire for a joke?”

“How about something to warm you up first?” Yifan suggests, and Chen nods, still shivering. 

Chen shivers all through the short journey through the fake wall and into the living area of Yifan’s house, and keeps shivering straight to the big chair, the large comfy one that you can practically sink into and just be surrounded by soft chair. Yifan removes himself and gets Chen one of the self-warming blankets, and he finally stops shivering.

“Yifan?”

“Yes Chennie Chennie Chen Chen?” 

Chen huffs. “I’m starting to regret letting you call me that. Sit with me.” He pats one of the hugely oversized armrests of the chair, but Yifan shakes his head. It just won’t feel right being perched on an oversized armrest instead of sinking into the chair.

“I can just sit on my couch.” Yifan gestures to the couch that he is very comfortably spread out on, but Chen pouts, sticking out his huge bottom lip to beckon Yifan over with his eyes. 

“I want a hug, please?”

Yifan gives in. 

When he gets to the chair, Chen shuffles over slightly so that they are now both kinda perched on an armrest and both kinda sinking into the softness of the chair. When Yifan settles in properly, Chen opens the blanket slightly to allow Yifan to share the warmth. Despite the warmth of the blanket, Chen’s arms and legs are still so cold when they slither around Yifan’s own and traps him down like Ace catching a meal. 

“You’re so warm.” Chen sighs, leaning his head onto Yifan’s shoulder, fully entrapping him in.

“And you’re so cold. Why are you still so cold?” Apparently Yifan’s shock and surprise is funny, because Chen laughs, snuggling in closer like he’s cuddling a stuffed animal instead of Yifan. 

“It was really cold outside. I don’t want to leave.” Chen mumbles, sounding for all purposes like he’s ready to fall asleep.

“Did you have dinner yet?” Chen nods, and Yifan runs out of reasons why Chen shouldn’t be allowed to do exactly that. “Then don’t leave. Take a nap.”

“No, I have to get home and wash my dishes.” Chen crinkles his nose, clearly not the happiest about that prospect. 

“There’s always tomorrow.” Yifan suggests.

“They’ve been soaking in water for days because I barely had time to go home, I really need to wash them before it becomes a biohazard.” Chen explains, still making no moves to go.

Yifan snorts, catching Chen’s express attention. “They’ll grow into another version of a deadly plant and then you won’t even be safe in your own home.”

“Oh gods.” Chen gasps, and Yifan cackles, hearing the pure disgust in Chen’s voice. “ Where can I possibly be safe now? Stop laughing, Yifan!”

“Sorry, it’s just you sound so personally insulted.” Yifan finishes with the giggles, Chen still looking pretty unhappy about the deal.

“Shut up.” Chen frowns, bordering on the base of a pout as he lays his head on Yifan’s shoulder and looks away, not making eye contact.

“I’m sorry, Chennie Chennie Chen Chen. But if you want somewhere you could be safe, then you could always come here.” Yifan offers.

Chen does not turn his head. “Ace wants to eat me alive.”

“Ace is banned from eating you alive or dead.” Yifan had a stern talk with Ace after receiving the unicorn, and thankfully Ace was shamed enough to agree that the nice adventurer who is kind enough to actually bring a unicorn shouldn’t be eaten. Both while dead or alive.

“Really? You did that for me?” Chen still doesn’t turn his head, but his tone is calmer, smoother, gentler.

“Of course I would. Now, do you want to take that nap?” Yifan asks once again, feeling Chen fully relax, no longer stiff from holding his head at such a sharp angle away from Yifan’s face.

“But I really need to get home, and there’s so many chores I have to do, like I have to do my dishes and my laundry and clean and dust and I need to start planning how I’m getting back at…” Chen starts whining, running through a full on list of what he still needs to do and exactly why he doesn’t want to do those things. 

There’s a fondness in this warmth, of another voice besides the silent scribbled words of Ace on a board, of life, want and the simple things in life. Before he fully gets the grasp of what he’s doing, Yifan leans forwards slightly to press a kiss onto the crown of Chen’s head, and listens to the words coming out of Chen’s mouth fade away.

“Oh. I’m sorry, should I have not done that?” Yifan asks, genuinely concerned by the silence and the way Chen isn’t making a single move.

Chen shakes his head, finally shifting his head so they can see each others’ faces. “No, it’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting it.” There’s a slight blush on Chen’s face. Good, he’s finally properly warming up.

“Okay. If you really don’t want to take that nap, then do you want to do something with me?” Yifan offers, and after a slight consideration, Chen nods.

“Okay, when you said do something, I didn’t expect you to bring me onto the cold roof in the middle of the fuckass night.” Chen whines, following Yifan across the tiles, hands tucked within arms and torso tucked within a borrowed hoodie that is more than big enough to reflect back some of Chen’s body heat.

“You weren’t going to nap, and I didn’t want to waste it.” Yifan states, stopping and spreading a blanket over the slightly slanted tiles that make up his roof. After getting all the corners properly stretched out and without any major wrinkles, Yifan plops himself down, patting the other side for Chen to join him. Chen grumbles a bit more, but he plops down too.

“What are you wasting?’ Chen asks, watching Yifan watch him. 

Yifan avoids the question. “Close your eyes and lie down.”

“This feels ominous.” But Chen does exactly as instructed of him, lying back. Once again, as if slightly darker deja vu, Chen turns to the side Yifan sits on and opens his eyes at the feeling of the same blanket covering him. “Wait, why do you only have one blanket for me? Aren’t you cold?” 

Yifan shakes his head as he lies down, shuffling slightly to get comfortable. “No, I don’t get cold as easily as you do, I barely feel that it’s cold. Look up.”

Yifan doesn’t see Chen turn his head, but he guesses at when Chen did so by the sharp intake of breath and the loss of words when it happened. The first time he saw the sea of stars, he was young, so young, but so ready to jump into this pool of potential and swim. It’s been a long time since he was young, and through civilization changing and eras ending and beginning, the stars have also gone and came. 

The best part of having his house in basically the middle of nowhere is that Yifan doesn’t need a telescope or anything to just look up at the sky and swim in the stars. He’s not as naive enough to believe he could do so, no, too much has happened for that, but Yifan knows them differently now. They’re still the same stars, but he knows how they speak and what they say, as well as how he could potentially say something back to them, once or twice in awhile. Tonight the stars call for tranquility and seizing opportunities, reading advice hours after it was ever applicable. Yifan doesn’t think he needs any advice right now.

A hand slips into his own, and Yifan starts slightly, turning his head to look over at Chen, suddenly super grounded in reality again, and the fact that he’s not floating away alone among the clouds. Chen’s hand is warm, and his eyes reflect the sea of stars, holding the world within himself.

Then Chen turns too, catching him in the middle of staring. Instead of laughing or teasing, he just stares quietly into Yifan’s eyes, while his own still reflect the heavens above.

“You look the best when you smile.” Chen observes. Is he smiling right now? Oh, he is. “And you look heavenly when you laugh.” 

“How much for a bit of the stars within your eyes?” Yifan whispers. Apparently it came out louder than he expected because Chen’s lips also stretch into a smile, and he shakes his head as he turns back to the sky.

“It doesn’t matter, just pay me another day.”


	2. Extended Ending

“So besides wanting to burn your best friend alive to get back at him, why did you come here instead of going home?” Yifan asks, folding the two self-warming blankets and putting them back into his self-warming blanket pile.

Chen mumbles something into the soup that Yifan had pushed him to eat after learning that he had not, in fact, had dinner yet, seeing that Yifan was just planning on modifying it and having it as a morning broth anyways. 

“What?” Yifan sits down across from Chen for better audio without the ruffling of blanket in the way.

“I wanted something, and this is the only place that he can’t find me at.” Chen replies, slurping his soup.

“What do you mean, this is the only place he can’t find you at?” Yifan props his head up on his arm, watching the way Chen holds onto the bowl, leeching warmth off the warm porcelain. It strikes him how good Chen looks like this, with the hair falling across his forehead and the way the warm light falls upon his skin. There’s also a bit of dirt on his cheek, but that’s no problem, it can be brushed away.

“I didn’t bother telling anyone where this is after getting that fire-proof weed-killer because you’re such a gem. Everyone thinks I have a really good relationship with the cashier at the little potions shop down the street from our guild hall, even if he totally likes Kyungsoo better than me.” Chen smirks, and Yifan rolls his eyes fondly as he reaches out to brush that piece of dust off Chen’s cheek.

“You’re a bother.” He comments, and Chen just smiles larger. “But what did you want?”

“First I need to ask if I needed to pay for it.” Chen appeals, a bit of a sly look in his eyes.

“Well, you did throw a surprisingly large amount of money at me during those few weeks when you ran in, grabbed something and then ran out.” Yifan does a mental count, figuring out exactly how much was Chen’s supposed change. “As long as it doesn’t cost too much, then you already paid for it.” 

“Cool. Then can I get a kiss?” Chen switches like clockwork back to a smirk, and Yifan short-circuits for a quick second.

“Oh. I guess I can make them free for you.” 


End file.
